The following description relates to business systems, for example an exchange infrastructure for collaborative business systems.
Companies face an increasing need for integration of and collaboration among their information and enterprise software systems. In most current system landscapes, many components are directly connected in a one-to-one relationship with other components, with the integration capabilities hardwired into the application components and individual mappings programs. Under these conditions, collaborative sharing of information or process control is difficult if not impossible. Upgrades, changes, or extensions to an infrastructure of directly connected components are challenging and resource-intensive.
Electronic business collaboration, however, increasingly requires connectivity among all applications inside and outside of company boundaries. Networks such as the Internet provide opportunities for systems to communicate almost instantly with other systems or individuals. Business processes that once were restricted to intranets and their users are now moving to the Internet to become an effective composition of Web services. A Web service is a programmable, self-contained, self-describing, modular application function that can be published, discovered or invoked through an open Internet standard.
New open protocols and standards like the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and extensible markup language (XML) provide universal connectivity among different messaging systems, however a challenge of technical connectivity can remain, particularly with some legacy systems. A mechanism is needed that can automatically bridge a technical connectivity gap and adapt to various messaging interfaces.